[boost] Re: Virus defense

From: scleary_at_[hidden]
Date: 2003-08-22 07:18:20

> From: Rozental, Gennadiy [mailto:gennadiy.rozental_at_[hidden]]
> > > I've got at least 400 mails (until it filled my mailbox several
> > > times) with it by now. I do not know proper solution. I still would
> > > like to provide
> > > email address for support. But 99% of traffic on that account are
> > > viruses or spam.
> 
> > There are some pretty good commercial (~30$/year) filters around, frying
> > 99% of the viruses and ~90% of the spam.
> > Everything that arrives at a newly installed address is filtered and the
> > ham forwarded to a secret address of your choice. Transition is really
> > painless if you can redirect everything arriving at your old address to
> > the new one.
> 
> > I have used spamcop.net for years and can definitely recommend it.
> 
> This all would make sence if I meant regular mail account (Where I do use
> spam filtering). I was talking about free webmail one. I do not have any
> power to do anything there.

I have a regular dialup account, but for convenience of use I usually access
it over the www.  I have a 25 MB limit, which was being filled up in about
half an hour.  If my ISP didn't allow me to set up filters on the server
side, I would still be totally sunk.  A server-side solution like what Dave
was referring to is really necessary in order to solve this sort of problem.
Those without a server-side solution (like poor Gennadiy!) are probably
having to log in every half-hour just to clean up their mail!  This is not
due to their running Windows systems, but is due to Boost users running
Windows systems...

Fortunately, this particular virus will de-activate itself on September
10th, according to Symantec.  But still, that's a long time for some
people's e-mail boxes filling up whenever they go to sleep!  What I'm
recommending can do nothing to solve the current problem, but would
hopefully prevent a similar occurrence in the future.

Spamcop looks like an excellent service; I'm planning on signing up for it
myself in the next month or so, but it will not protect against virii (such
as this current attack) AFAIK.

Like Gennadiy, I want my e-mail address to be available for users to write
their questions to, but at the same time we must realize that there are
apparently a *lot* of Boost users who run Windows and will open unknown and
unexpected executable attachments.  For this reason, I recommend munging all
e-mail addresses in the next Boost release.

        -Steve